HRWUN Member States Should Call for Human Rights Council Special Session
- Iran’s security forces have carried out mass killings of protesters after nationwide protests escalated on January 8, 2026.
- The mass killings by Iranian security forces are a stark reminder that rulers who massacre their own people will keep committing atrocities until they are held to account.
- UN member states should urgently convene a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to put human rights and accountability in Iran front and center of the international response.
(Beirut, January 16, 2026) – Iran’s security forces have carried out mass killings of protesters after nationwide protests escalated on January 8, 2026, Human Rights Watch said today. Thousands of protesters and bystanders are believed to have been killed, while the government’s severe restrictions on communications have concealed the true scale of atrocities.
Security forces scaled up their deadly crackdown in a coordinated manner after January 8, resulting in large-scale killings and injuries of protesters and bystanders across the country. Human Rights Watch reviewed evidence that many protesters were killed or injured by gunshot wounds to their heads and torsos. Iranian officials cited in media outlets have admitted that the number of deaths has reached the thousands.
“The mass killings by Iranian security forces since January 8 are unprecedented in the country and a stark reminder that rulers who massacre their own people will keep committing atrocities until they are held to account,” said Lama Fakih, program director at Human Rights Watch. “United Nations member states should urgently convene a special UN Human Rights Council session to put human rights and accountability in Iran front and center of the international response.”
From January 12 to 14, Human Rights Watch spoke with 21 people, including witnesses, relatives of victims, journalists, human rights defenders, medical professionals, and other informed sources. Some shared screenshots of witness accounts, audio messages, and images. Human Rights Watch also analyzed 51 verified photographs and videos posted on social media or sent directly to researchers and consulted the Independent Forensic Expert Group of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, which reviewed images of injuries.
Despite severe communication restrictions, Human Rights Watch has been able to obtain and analyze evidence of the killing of protesters in some provinces, including Tehran, Alborz, Kermanshah, Razavi Khorasan, Gilan, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Markazi, and Mazandaran.
“Anyone you speak to these days has a relative, a friend, or an acquaintance who has been killed or injured,” said one person interviewed. Others shared similar experiences.
In the capital, Tehran, videos show a heavily militarized response to the protests as they grew. Human Rights Watch verified videos that began to circulate on January 11 of body bags and bodies piled up in and around the Forensic Diagnostic and Laboratory Center in Kahrizak, south of the capital. The bodies were placed there for families to identify their loved ones. Human Rights Watch counted at least 400 bodies visible in several videos from that site alone. This number is an undercount, as bodies were piled on top of each other, making counting difficult.
In Kermanshah, a large city in western Iran, security forces fired at protesters. A witness sent audio recordings to Human Rights Watch on January 8 with an accompanying text message reading: “They [the security forces] are shooting here, there is a lot of tear gas. I am stuck on the street on my way back from work, there are protests all over and every street that I tried is blocked and they are shooting.”
The protests erupted on December 28, 2025, sparked by the deteriorating economic situation and living conditions, and quickly spread across the country. Protesters demanded human rights, dignity, and freedom, and called for the downfall of the Islamic Republic. State officials have demonized protesters by labeling them “rioters” and “terrorists.”
State-affiliated media reported that at least 121 security force members have been killed, and verified footage shows some protesters engaging in acts of violence. Human Rights Watch could not independently assess the credibility of these figures. However, Human Rights Watch has reviewed information that in some cases—consistent with longstanding practice—the authorities have pressured families of victims to falsely assert that their loved ones were members of the Basij, a force under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps whose members generally dress in plain clothes, as a condition to release their bodies.
Human Rights Watch also interviewed witnesses who described security forces using lethal force against unarmed protesters in various provinces. The wide-scale, unjustified use of lethal force resulting in mass killings of protesters and bystanders indicate that the authorities have deliberately and unlawfully used firearms as state policy.
Under the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms, law enforcement officers may only use force when strictly necessary and to the extent required to achieve a legitimate policing objective. The UN Human Rights Committee, in its general comment on the right to peaceful assembly, has stated: “Firearms are not an appropriate tool for the policing of assemblies. They must never be used simply to disperse an assembly. In order to comply with international law, any use of firearms by law enforcement officials in the context of assemblies must be limited to targeted individuals in circumstances in which it is strictly necessary to confront an imminent threat of death or serious injury.”
The authorities have also interfered with the media, severely restricted access to telecommunications, and shut down the internet in violation of the right to freedom of expression. Access should be immediately restored, Human Rights Watch said.
UN member states should immediately convene a special session of the UN Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said. States at the special session should make clear that those responsible for grave human rights violations will be held to account. They should ask the International Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Iran to conduct a special inquiry into these latest atrocities and to offer concrete recommendations to advance accountability.
The UN leadership and member states should ensure that the Fact-Finding Mission has the resources to carry out its important mandate, which includes preserving evidence of violations, including for future judicial proceedings to bring those responsible to justice.
“The horrific images of families sifting through hundreds of body bags in an open-air morgue should shock the conscience of the world to take action to hold those responsible, including at the highest levels, accountable,” Fakih said.
Large-Scale Killings Across Iran
Human Rights Watch verified photographs and videos showing anti-government protests in 27 of Iran’s 31 provinces. Many were geolocated by GeoConfirmed, a volunteer-driven visual verification platform. While this limited information does not show the full extent of the protests, it indicates how widespread they have been.
Tehran Province
Witness accounts and verified footage, including from morgues and cemeteries, show evidence of mass killings by the security forces across Tehran province.
Kahrizak Morgue
At the Forensic Diagnostic and Laboratory Center in Kahrizak—commonly referred to as the Kahrizak morgue—which is 18 kilometers south of central Tehran, photographs and videos posted online and verified and geolocated by Human Rights Watch show hundreds of body bags as people search among them, crying and screaming. Large commercial trucks and mortuary vehicles transported bodies there for several days. Reports suggest there is an area specifically for women’s bodies.
Human Rights Watch counted at least 400 body bags or bodies in three videos shared on social media between January 11 and 13. This is an undercount, as bodies were piled on top of each other, making counting difficult.
All visible bodies appeared to be in civilian attire. Some were covered in blood; others had gunshot wounds; some bodies had wounds consistent with the spray pattern of metal pellets fired from shotguns; and other corpses had open wounds. Many had EKG sticky pads on their chests, and one man still had an intubation tube in his mouth.
Other Accounts from Tehran
Witnesses also said that many bodies were at Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery Complex, 600 meters from the Kahrizak morgue. One person who went to identify the body of a loved one on January 10 said: “When we got close to the [large] halls, we saw bodies piled on top of bodies. They were in body bags, and some had tags with identification details. From the size of the halls, I could estimate that between 1,500 to 2,000 bodies were held there.” The witness said that more bodies were arriving by refrigerated trucks in the late afternoon when they were leaving the cemetery.
A human rights defender said that a relative who had gone to the cemetery on January 9 to identify the body of a loved one reported that relatives identified 300 bodies, shown on video screens, on that day alone.
A relative of a young protester in Tehran said that the family searched for their loved one “among a pile of hundreds of bodies” in a Tehran hospital on the evening of January 8.
Relatives of victims, other informed sources, and verified videos describe the state’s heavily militarized response to the protests in Tehran on January 8, 9, and 10. One person said that on the evening of January 8, her sister was protesting in central Tehran when a friend of hers who was also protesting was shot in the head from behind.
A person interviewed who knew Robina Aminian, a 23-year-old student, said that she was also shot in the head from behind while protesting in Tehran on January 8. Aminian’s family later identified her body among a large number of bodies in a Tehran hospital. Human Rights Watch also obtained information that a woman was shot in the throat on the evening of January 8 in Tehran as she was marching in front of her husband during the protests.
A witness said that security forces “began a massacre” as crowds dispersed at protests they attended, and that they pointed their weapons at protesters as they left, including at their torsos, on at least two occasions, ordering them to “return home.”
Human Rights Watch also reviewed two accounts sent to medical professionals outside Iran by staff in two hospitals in eastern Tehran. In one account, the source refers to a large number of people brought to the hospital with no vital signs. The other reported that nearly 40 bodies had been brought to their hospital on January 8. An activist outside Iran said that medical staff in two hospitals in Tehran had reported that about 500 dead bodies had been brought in by the evening of January 8.
One geolocated video recorded at night from a building overlooking Police Station 126 in the Tehranpars neighborhood of the capital shows a security force member on a police station roof firing an automatic weapon, as well as other security force members shooting other firearms at protesters and, apparently, toward the person filming the scene. Throughout the 6-minute video, hundreds of shots were fired.
Alborz Province
Human Rights Watch received a 21-second video reportedly taken in Fardis, Alborz province. The Guardian reported on the same video it received from activists in Iran after crackdowns were reported in Fardis on January 8. The video shows two people lying on the ground; one has an injury just above his right eye and is bleeding profusely from his mouth. Someone helping him says: “He’s not breathing. Please hold on, for God’s sake, please hold on.”
Kermanshah Province
Human Rights Watch reviewed 12 short accounts by witnesses in Kermanshah sent to a journalist on the evening of January 8, who shared them with the organization, shortly before the internet shutdown, who shared them with the organization. The accounts draw a harrowing picture of security forces’ use of lethal force in several areas, including in Shahrak-e Moallem, Maskan, and Darrah Derejh neighborhoods, as well as in Gilan-e Gharb and Eslamabad-e Gharb cities.
In one account, a witness said: “Kermanshah is a war zone with nonstop gunfire.” Two others described sounds of gunfire continuing for hours. One described a member of the security forces leaving a vehicle and “riddling protesters, mostly women and girls chanting at a crossroad, with bullets.” Another said that “security forces are massacring everyone.”
Human Rights Watch also spoke with three people who had spoken with witnesses in Kermanshah. One said that, based on credible accounts from one hospital in Kermanshah city, nearly 300 people had been admitted on January 8 with no vital signs, most with signs of gunshot wounds to the head and chest, and 41 people still alive with gunshot wounds.
A video filmed in the morning and posted to X on January 8 and geolocated by GeoConfirmed shows large numbers of armed security forces rushing toward protesters in Maskan town, a neighborhood in Kermanshah city. One man holding a shotgun fires repeatedly toward cars in traffic as a vehicle swerves to avoid him.
Razavi Khorasan Province
Witness accounts and verified videos indicate similar unlawful use of lethal force by security forces in the Razavi Khorasan province, including in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, resulting in large-scale killings.
Human Rights Watch reviewed three short accounts by witnesses in Razavi Khorasan, sent to a medical professional on the evening of January 8, shortly before the internet shutdown. In one account, a medical professional in Mashhad reported direct knowledge of at least 15 deaths, including a woman as well as 5 men whose killings by gunfire he witnessed on one street alone on January 8. Another account reported that dozens of bodies had been taken to two hospitals in Mashhad in the afternoon of January 8.
A third account revealed the scale of killings in the city of Mashhad: “They have killed so many, as if lambs have been slaughtered on the streets, the ground is drenched in blood. … [T]here were no more [shotgun] pellets after Thursday [January 8]; security forces only fired rifles.”
An account by a medical professional, obtained by a human rights organization and shared with Human Rights Watch, said that between about 7 p.m. on January 9 and 2 a.m. on January 10, about 150 bodies of killed protesters and bystanders were taken to one hospital alone in Mashhad.
Human Rights Watch reviewed a video said to be taken in Mashhad that showed two men in black uniforms on a second-floor balcony. Researchers were not able to independently identify where it was filmed. One of the men in the video fires three times in the direction of protesters gathered outside the building, as seen by three flashes and loud bangs.
Human Rights Watch consulted media forensic experts from Deepfakes Rapid Response Force, an initiative of the nongovernmental organization WITNESS, who found no significant indicators of artificial intelligence manipulation. But due to the slowdown effect that had already been added to the video, the results were inconclusive as to whether the video was otherwise modified.
Other Provinces
Human Rights Watch obtained information pointing to similar large-scale killings in Gilan, Mazandaran, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, and Markazi provinces.
Two people from Gilan province said that their relatives reported that dozens had been killed during protests in small towns there, including around the town of Fuman. One person who had spoken to his family in Gilan province said: “My father knew between 15 to 20 people who were killed only in a small town in Gilan.” An account received by a medical professional and shared with Human Rights Watch stated that “security forces shot many dead in Rasht,” Gilan’s provincial capital.
A witness described a heavy presence of security forces in Amol, Mazandaran province, on January 8 and hearing continuous gunfire in the evening. Two other accounts described a lethal response to protests in Amol as well as Sari and Babol, other towns in Mazandaran, with one reporting: “They have killed many [in Amol] but the news is not getting out.”
A person Human Rights Watch interviewed who spoke with a witness in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province said that the security forces were using heavy machine guns, shotguns, and rifles against protesters. The witness said they saw 25 bodies at the governor’s compound in the provincial capital, Yasuj, on January 10, and many people with eye injuries from metal pellets.
A witness said that the security forces cracked down on protesters in Mahallat, Markazi province on January 8 with tear gas and shotguns. She saw three people bleeding, including a boy under 18, who had been shot with pellets in their faces. The witness reported that two people killed that night included a 15 or 16-year-old boy who was shot three times while trying to climb the wall of the intelligence office. The other man was shot in the head.
Authorities’ Harassment of Victims’ Families
The Iranian authorities have withheld bodies of victims, denied families the right to bury and mourn their loved ones in a dignified manner, and in some cases buried the bodies without the families’ knowledge or consent at locations demanded by officials.
In one case, the relative of a young protester killed in Tehran on January 8 said that security forces coerced the family to bury their loved one in a cemetery far from her hometown to prevent a crowd from gathering at her funeral.
Authorities have also coerced families to either make statements that their loved ones were members of the Basij forces and killed by protesters or to pay significant fees to receive the remains.
